Analyzing tracking requests generated by client devices interacting with a website

ABSTRACT

An online system receives tracking requests from client devices interacting with a website. The online system analyzes user interactions with websites using the tracking requests. The online system predicts an accurate label for the web page that caused the tracking request to be generated. The online system uses the accurate label for generating reports describing user interactions with the website. The online system determines a quality of tracking requests generated by the website based on various factors including a number of web pages of the website that generate tracking requests, the type of information provided by the tracking requests, and so on. The online system generates reports describing the quality of the tracking requests. The online system uses a metric indicating the quality of tracking requests of the website to determine whether to use predicted labels instead of labels provided by tracking requests for generating reports of the website.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.15/636,500, filed Jun. 28, 2017, which is incorporated by reference inits entirety.

BACKGROUND

This disclosure relates generally to analyzing tracking requestsreceived by an online system from client devices rendering web pagesreceived from a website, and in particular to determining accuracy ofthe information provided by client devices via tracking requests to anonline system.

Online systems such as social networking systems track user interactionswith the online system so that they can provide features and contentthat is relevant to each user. The online system logs user interactionswith the online system for analysis. However, online systems also preferto monitor user interactions with external systems such as third partywebsites. An online system may not have direct access to logs of theexternal website. However, a client device can send a tracking requestto the online system describing user interactions between the clientdevice and the external website.

An external website provides instructions with the web page that areexecuted by the client device when the client device renders the webpage. These instructions cause the tracking request to be generated forsending information to the online system. However, sometimes externalwebsites provide inaccurate data (e.g., label the web page incorrectlyor report the wrong event, fail to label the web page at all, reportduplicate events, etc.). This may happen due to defects in theinstructions provided by a web page to the client device for generatingthe tracking requests. Conventional techniques fail to detect sucherrors in the information reported by client devices via trackingrequests. As a result, a client device provides inaccurate informationto the online system. Any analysis performed by the online system basedon such inaccurate data reported by a client device is inaccurate andresults in the online system making incorrect inferences and takingwrong actions based on the inferences, for example, sending irrelevantcontent to a user.

SUMMARY

An online system receives tracking requests from client devicesinteracting with a website to analyze user interactions with thewebsite. The website provides instructions with web pages sent to aclient device that cause the client device to send tracking instructionsto the online system. A tracking request provides a label identifyingthe webpage that caused the tracking request to be generated. A trackingrequest may incorrectly identify a web page, for example, if theinstructions provided by the website for the web page include errors.The online system uses a machine learning model to predict an accuratelabel for the web page that caused the tracking request to be generated.

The online system extracts a feature vector for a tracking request. Thefeature vector comprises features based on the parameters describing theweb page. The online system provides the feature vector as input to amachine learning model for predicting a label identifying the web page.In an embodiment, the machine learning model is configured to generate ascore indicating an accuracy with which an input label identifies a webpage of an input tracking request. The online system stores a mappingfrom the label received with the tracking request to the predicted labelif the predicted label differs from the label received. The onlinesystem uses the mapping table to generate accurate reports describinguser interactions with the website.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The teachings of the embodiments can be readily understood byconsidering the following detailed description in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system environment in which the onlinesystem operates, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 2A is a block diagram of a system architecture of the onlinesystem, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram of a system architecture of the website scoregenerator, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example use case of receiving and storing trackingrequests, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example use case of generating and storing featurevectors, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining thequality of tracking requests, in accordance with an embodiment.

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a websitetracking score for a content publishing website, in accordance with anembodiment.

FIG. 7 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a websitecoverage score for a content publishing website, in accordance with anembodiment.

FIG. 8 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a signalintent score for a content publishing website, in accordance with anembodiment.

FIG. 9 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining aconversion score for a content publishing website 130, in accordancewith an embodiment.

The figures depict various embodiments for purposes of illustrationonly. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the followingdiscussion that alternative embodiments of the structures and methodsillustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principlesdescribed herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

System Environment

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system environment 100 in which an onlinesystem 110 operates, in accordance with an embodiment. In the embodimentillustrated in FIG. 1, the system environment 100 includes a contentprovider system 101, an online system 110, client devices 120, a contentpublishing website 130, and a network 140. The content provider system101 includes a content store 102 for storing content items. The contentpublishing website 130 includes a web server 131 for delivering contentitems to users via client devices 120. The client devices 120 include abrowser 121 that provides an interface through which users can access acontent publishing website 130. The online system 110 includes, in part,a tracking request 111 signal, a tracking request label predictor 112, alabel mapping table 113, and a report store 114.

The content provider system 101 shown in FIG. 1 provides electronicmedia content items to the online system 110 for delivering to theclient devices 120. Alternatively, the content provides may provide thecontent to a content publishing website 130 for providing to users ofthe content publishing website 130. The content provider system 101 maybe associated with a user, an enterprise, an organization, or a group,for example, a political campaign, a university, a corporation, thegovernment, etc. In an embodiment, a content item is a sponsored contentitem for which a content provider associated with the content providersystem 101 provides remuneration to the online system (or a contentpublisher) for delivery of the content items to an online audience viathe client devices 120. The term “content item” refers to “electronicmedia content item” wherever it appears herein. Content items may beimages, text paragraphs, video clips, audio clips, hyperlinks, onlineforms, etc. Examples of sponsored content items include onlineadvertisements.

The content store 102 shown in FIG. 1 is used by the content providersystem 101 for storing content items. The content store 102 may beorganized as a database, table, file, etc., stored on one or more ofremovable or non-removable memory cards, tape cassettes, zip cassettes,and computer hard drives. The content store 102 may include multipledata fields, each describing one or more attributes of the contentitems. The content store 102 may include, for a single content item—acontent provider identifier (e.g., whether the content item is providedby the government), a list of policies and one or more weights regardingdelivering of the content item to the client devices 120 and the contentpublishing website 130, one or more threshold rates of clientinteractions, a list of desired client interactions, such as clicking ona link in a content item, closing a content item using a close button ona browser of a client device, sharing a content item from a first clientdevice to a second client device, performing a transaction associatedwith a content item, and so on. The content store 102 may also store forall content items—the number of content items to be delivered in a giventime interval, a length of a time interval during which the contentitems are expected to be delivered, an estimate of a total number ofdeliveries of content items during the time interval, and so on. Adelivery of a content item refers to an instance of a particular contentitem being delivered to a user. For example, if the same content item isdelivered to multiple users or multiple times to the same user, eachinstance is referred to as a delivery.

The content publishing website 130 can be any website that providescontent to users. For example, the content publishing website 130 may bea digital publisher of newspapers, e-books, digital magazines, digitallibraries, digital catalogues, etc. The content publishing website 130may distribute content including web pages, videos, and text, forexample, books, magazines, and newspapers to users through tabletreading devices, distribution via the Internet (in the form of thebrowser 121 accessible by the client devices 120), other interactivemedia, etc. The content publishing website 130 is a collection of webpages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a commondomain name, and published on at least one web server 131. The contentpublishing website 130 may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol(IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network(LAN), by referencing a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifiesthe site. The content publishing website 130 can have many functions andcan be used in various fashions—a personal website, a commercial websitefor a company, a government website, a non-profit organization website,website for entertainment, social networking system, a website providingnews or educational content, private website such as a company's websitefor its employees typically a part of an intranet, etc. In oneembodiment, the content publishing website 130 can embed trackinginstructions for generating tracking requests within one or more webpages of the content publishing website 130 in order to track userinteractions. In an embodiment, the tracking instructions are associatedwith one or more tracking pixels. A tracking pixel is a portion of a webpage, for example, a segment of HTML code that produces a transparent1×1 image, an iframe, or other suitable object that may be embedded in aweb page sent to a client device by the content publishing website 130.A tracking pixel is activated, or triggered, when a web page is loaded(e.g., rendered) into a user's browser 121 on a client device 120 forviewing. When a tracking pixel is rendered, the HTML code of thetracking pixel sends a tracking request, to the online system 110. Thetracking request may include information describing the web page beingrendered, for example, a label describing the web page, parametersdescribing values, data, or objects presented to the user by the webpage, and so on. The online system 110 receives the tracking request.Tracking requests convey to the online system information describinguser interaction of a user with a content publishing website 130 or anywebsite external to the online system. For example, a tracking pixel maytrigger on a web page of a shopping website as a user is browsingproducts within the website. When the tracking pixel is rendered, theclient device sends a tracking request to the online system 110identifying the user, the product the user was browsing, and any otherparameters.

The client devices 120 shown in FIG. 1 can be used by online system 110users for interacting with the online system 110 and the contentpublishing website 130. Each client device 120 is a computing devicecapable of receiving client input as well as transmitting and/orreceiving data via the network 140. The client device 120 may be aconventional computer system, such as a desktop or laptop computer.Alternatively, the client device 120 may be a device having computerfunctionality, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobiletelephone, a smartphone or another suitable device. The client device120 may execute an application allowing a user of the online system 110to interact with the online system 110 and/or the content publishingwebsite 130. In one example, the client device 120 executes a browserapplication 121 to enable interaction between the client device 120 andthe online system 110 via the network 140. In one example, the clientdevice 120 interacts with the content publishing website 130 through anapplication programming interface (API) running on a native operatingsystem of the client device 120, such as IOS® or ANDROID™. A user maydownload content items from the online system 110 to the client device120 using the browser 121. In addition, a user may interact with thecontent items by clicking on a link in a content item, filling in clientinformation into an online form, closing the content item using a “closewindow” button on the browser 121 or on the client device 120, etc.

The online system 110 receives tracking requests 111 from client devices120, analyzes the tracking requests for accuracy, and generates a scoreassociated with the overall quality of the information provided by theclient device in the tracking requests 111. In one embodiment, theonline system 110 provides tracking pixel HTML code to contentpublishing websites 130 that are interested in providing informationdescribing user interactions with the content publishing website 130 tothe online system 110. The online system 110 may generate reports basedon the data received with tracking requests and provide to users, forexample, administrators of the content publishing website 130. Forexample, if the online system 110 is a social networking system, theonline system 110 may generate reports that combine demographicinformation of users that is stored in the social networking system withuser interaction patterns of the content publishing website 130. Thisallows the content publishing website 130 to analyze how users havingdifferent demographics interact with the content publishing website 130.

In another embodiment, content publishing websites 130 may generatetheir own tracking pixel HTML code and associated pixel data and providethe online system 110 with tracking requests as the tracking pixel isrendered on client devices of users. In the embodiment illustrated inFIG. 1, the online system 110 comprises, in part, a tracking request111, a tracking request label predictor 112, a label mapping table 113,and a report store 114.

A tracking request 111 is sent to the online system 110 from a contentpublishing website 130 for each instance that a tracking pixel placedwithin a web page of a content publishing website 130 is rendered by theclient device. Each tracking request 111 contains a label identifyingthe type of web page on which the tracking pixel is embedded (e.g., ashopping cart page, a checkout page, a product page, a registrationpage, etc.) and parameters that describe contextual informationassociated with each tracking request (e.g., price of a product viewedor purchased by a user, product SKU number, product dimensions, productcolor, timestamp indicating when the product was viewed, etc.). Inaddition, each tracking request 111 includes signals describing a degreeof tracking pixel coverage supported by a content publishing website 130(e.g., full website coverage) and a conversion value (e.g., cost of apurchased product). Because the pixel data contained within eachtracking request may be generated by a content publishing website 130,labels may not accurately reflect the type of web page from which thetracking request was sent. For example, a tracking pixel embedded withina registration web page of a content publishing website 130 may beincorrectly labeled as a checkout web page. Accordingly, the trackingpixel of the registration web page may be triggered by a client device120 which sends a tracking request 111 to the online system 110identifying the registration web page as a checkout web page, therebyproviding an incorrect label. In an embodiment, the online system 110uses the parameters received in the tracking request (e.g., contextualinformation associated with the tracking request) to determine whetherthe label is correct. Furthermore, if the online system 110 determinesthat the label is incorrect, the online system 110 generates a correctlabel to describe the web page.

The tracking request label predictor 112 receives a tracking request 111from a content publishing website 130 as input and predicts a labelidentifying the web page on which it is embedded. The tracking requestlabel predictor 112 can use parameters included with the trackingrequest 111 to identify contextual information associated with thetracking pixel triggering event. If the parameters provided in thetracking request 111 indicate that the web page may be incorrectlylabeled, the tracking request label predictor 112 predicts the correctlabel based on parameters to the label mapping table 113. The onlinesystem 110 may generate a label mapping table 113 that provides amapping from incorrect labels to the correct label. The mapping table113 may be used internally by the online system 110, or provided to thecontent publishing website 130. In an embodiment, if the online systemgenerates reports describing the content publishing website 130, theonline system may convert incorrect labels to correct labels based onthe label mapping table 113 to generate an accurate report. Thesereports are stored in the report store 114. The tracking request labelpredictor 112, label mapping table 113, and the report store 114 will bediscussed further in the following section.

The content provider system 101, content publishing website 130, clientdevices 120, and the online system 110 are configured to communicate viathe network 140 shown in FIG. 1, which may comprise any combination oflocal area and/or wide area networks, using both wired and/or wirelesscommunication systems. In one embodiment, the network 140 uses standardcommunications technologies and/or protocols. For example, the network140 includes communication links using technologies such as Ethernet,802.11, worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), 3G, 4G,code division multiple access (CDMA), digital subscriber line (DSL),etc. Examples of networking protocols used for communicating via thenetwork 140 include multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), transmissioncontrol protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), hypertext transportprotocol (HTTP), simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), and file transferprotocol (FTP). Data exchanged over the network 140 may be representedusing any suitable format, such as hypertext markup language (HTML) orextensible markup language (XML). In some embodiments, all or some ofthe communication links of the network 140 may be encrypted using anysuitable technique or techniques.

The online system 110 as disclosed provides benefits and advantages thatinclude increased engagement of users with content items. Otheradvantages of the system include efficient delivery of content to usersby eliminating delivery of content items in cases where users areunlikely to interact with the content items, faster processing of theonline system since fewer content items are transmitted, less powerconsumption, lower latency in content transmission, less datatransmitted over the network, etc.

System Architecture

FIG. 2A is a block diagram of an online system 110 according to oneembodiment. In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2A, the online system110 includes a user profile store 200, an action logger 205, an actionlog 210, a content store 215, an edge store 220, a tracking requeststore 225, a feature extraction module 230, a feature vector store 235,a tracking request label predictor 112, a training data store 240, alabel mapping table 113, a tracking request score generator 245, and areport store 114. In other embodiments, the online system 110 mayinclude additional, fewer, or different components for variousapplications. Conventional components such as network interfaces,security functions, load balancers, failover servers, management andnetwork operations consoles, and the like are not shown so as to notobscure the details of the system architecture.

Each user of the online system 110 is associated with a user profile,which is stored in the user profile store 200. A user profile includesdeclarative information about the user that was explicitly shared by theuser and may also include profile information inferred by the onlinesystem 110. In one embodiment, a user profile store 200 of an onlinesystem user includes multiple data fields, each describing one or moreattributes of the user. Examples of information stored in a user profilestore 200 include biographic, demographic, and other types ofdescriptive information, such as work experience, educational history,gender, hobbies or preferences, location and the like. A user profilemay also store other information provided by the user, for example,images or videos. In certain embodiments, an image of a user may betagged with information identifying the online system 110 user displayedin an image. A user profile in the user profile store 200 may alsomaintain references to actions by the corresponding user performed oncontent items in the action log 210.

While user profiles in the user profile store 200 are frequentlyassociated with individuals, allowing individuals to interact with eachother via the online system 110, user profiles may also be stored forentities such as businesses or organizations. This allows an entity toestablish a presence on the online system 110 for connecting andexchanging content with other online system 110 users. The entity maypost information about itself, about its products or provide otherinformation to users of the online system 110 using a brand pageassociated with the entity's user profile. Other users of the onlinesystem 110 may connect to the brand page to receive information postedto the brand page or to receive information from the brand page. A userprofile associated with the brand page may include information about theentity itself, providing users with background or informational dataabout the entity.

The action logger 205 receives communications about user actionsinternal to and/or external to the online system 110, populating theaction log 210 with information about user actions. Examples of actionsinclude adding a connection to another user, sending a message toanother user, uploading an image, reading a message from another user,viewing content associated with another user, and attending an eventposted by another user. In addition, a number of actions may involve anobject and one or more particular users, so these actions are associatedwith those users as well and stored in the action log 210.

The action log 210 may be used by the online system 110 to track useractions on the online system 110, as well as actions on contentpublishing websites 130 that communicate information to the onlinesystem 110. Users may interact with various objects on the online system110, and information describing these interactions is stored in theaction log 210. Examples of interactions with objects include: viewingvideos, commenting on posts, sharing links, checking-in to physicallocations via a mobile device, accessing content items, and any othersuitable interactions. Additional examples of interactions with objectson the online system 110 that are included in the action log 210include: viewing videos posted by a user's connections in the onlinesystem 110, commenting on a photo album, communicating with a user,establishing a connection with an object, joining an event, joining agroup, creating an event, authorizing an application, using anapplication, expressing a preference for an object (“liking” theobject), and engaging in a transaction. Additionally, the action log 210may record a user's interactions with sponsored content on the onlinesystem 110 as well as with other applications operating on the onlinesystem 110. In some embodiments, data from the action log 210 is used toinfer interests or preferences of a user, augmenting the interestsincluded in the user's user profile store 200 and allowing a morecomplete understanding of user preferences.

In one embodiment, the edge store 220 stores information describingconnections between users and other objects on the online system 110 asedges. Some edges may be defined by users, allowing users to specifytheir relationships with other users. For example, users may generateedges with other users that parallel the users' real-life relationships,such as friends, co-workers, partners, and so forth. In one embodiment,the user profile store 200 stores data describing the connectionsbetween different users of the online system 110, such as the number offriends shared between the users out of the total number of friends, thefraction of time since joining or becoming a member of the socialnetworking system that overlaps between the two users (e.g., whether theusers joined the online system at the same time or have an overlap for acertain period of time), or a combination of these signals. The recordof users and their connections in the online system 110 may be called a“social graph.”

Other edges are generated when users interact with objects in the onlinesystem 110, such as expressing interest in a page on the online system110, sharing a link with other users of the online system 110, viewingvideos posted by other users of the online system 110, and commenting onposts or videos provided by other users of the online system 110. Theconnections between users and other objects, or edges, can beunidirectional (e.g., a user following another user) or bidirectional(e.g., a user is a friend with another user).

In one embodiment, an edge may include various features eachrepresenting characteristics of interactions between users, interactionsbetween users and objects, or interactions between objects. For example,features included in an edge describe rate of interaction between twousers, how recently two users have interacted with each other, the rateor amount of information retrieved by one user about an object, or thenumber and types of comments posted by a user about an object. Thefeatures may also represent information describing a particular objector user. For example, a feature may represent the level of interest thata user has in a particular topic, the rate at which the user logs intothe online system 110, or information describing demographic informationabout a user. Each feature may be associated with a source object oruser, a target object or user, and a feature value. A feature may bespecified as an expression based on values describing the source objector user, the target object or user, or interactions between the sourceobject or user and target object or user. Hence, an edge may berepresented as one or more feature expressions.

The edge store 220 also stores information about edges, such as affinityscores for objects, interests, and other users. In one embodiment,affinity scores, or “affinities,” are computed by the online system 110over time to approximate a user's interest in an object or another userin the online system 110 based on the actions performed by the user. Auser's affinity may be computed by the online system 110 over time toapproximate a user's affinity for an object, interest, and other usersin the online system 110 based on the actions performed by the user.Computation of affinity is further described in U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 12/978,265, filed on Dec. 23, 2010, U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/690,254, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/689,969, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, and U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/690,088, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, each of which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety. Multiple interactions betweena user and a specific object may be stored as a single edge in the edgestore 220, in one embodiment. Alternatively, each interaction between auser and a specific object is stored as a separate edge.

The content store 215 stores objects that represent various types ofcontent. Examples of content represented by an object include a video,page post, status update, photograph, link, shared content item, gamingapplication achievement, check-in event at a local business, brand page,or any other type of content. Online system 110 users may create objectsstored by the content store 215, such as status updates, photos taggedby users to be associated with other objects in the online system 110,events, groups, or applications. In some embodiments, objects arereceived from content publishing websites 130 and placed in the contentstore 215. These objects may represent sponsored content campaignsprovided to the content publishing website 130 by a content providersystem 101.

The tracking request store 225 receives data corresponding to one ormore tracking requests 111 sent from client devices responsive torendering web pages of a content publishing website 130. In anembodiment, the online system 110 receives and stores a sequence oftracking requests 111 associated with a user session. Here, a usersession may correspond to a sequence of web pages visited by a user on aparticular content publishing website 130 from the time the userconnects with the content publishing website 130 to the time the usecompletes the interactions (e.g., when user performs a log out or checkout operation). Each tracking request 111 within a user session receivesits own entry in the tracking request store 225, and contains data(e.g., label and parameters) that describe the web page that triggeredthe tracking request 111 from the client device.

In one embodiment, such as that illustrated in FIG. 4, each entry in thetracking request store 235 (e.g., entries A, B, and C) includes a label335 that was provided by the web page rendered by the client device andparameters including a URL 330 of the web page rendered by the clientdevice, a timestamp 340 of the time when the web page was rendered, anda description of a product 345 that was described in the web pagerendered by the client device. Other embodiments may include additionalparameters that describe a product size, color, and SKU number, inaddition to a label 335. This data may also include the identificationof the user that generated the user session if the content publishingwebsite 130 requires users to login. In yet another embodiment,parameters for an entry in the tracking request store also include oneor more cookies stored in the client device.

The feature extraction module 230 identifies tracking request 111entries in the tracking request store 225 and generates a feature vectorfor each entry. Each feature vector is comprised of features extractedfrom a tracking request 111. A feature may be based on data provided bythe client device with a tracking request, for example, variousparameters provided by the web page corresponding to the trackingrequest. A feature may be based on a plurality of tracking requestsassociated with a single user session. For example, a feature vector maycontain features providing contextual information indicating the numberof tracking requests 111 within in a user session, a total time durationfor which a web page was displayed by the client device 120 before thenext web page was loaded, a count of how many times a tracking requesthaving a particular label was received within a user session, a relativeposition of the tracking request on a time line of the user session, forexample, whether the tracking request was generated in the beginning ofthe user session, middle of the user session, or towards the end of theuser session, etc. These features provide the online system 110 withadditional context in determining if web pages within a given usersession on a content publishing website 130 are labeled correctly. Eachfeature vector generated by the feature extraction module 230 is storedin the feature vector store 245.

The feature vector store 245 stores feature vectors generated by thefeature extraction module 230. In one embodiment, such as thatillustrated in FIG. 4, each entry in the feature vector store 245 (e.g.,entries D, E, and F) contains information extracted from each trackingrequest 111 entry in the tracking request store 235. As illustrated,feature vector store 245 entry D contains the URL 330 and label 335information as contained in the tracking request 111 to which itcorresponds (e.g., tracking request store 235 entry A). However, thefeature vector store 245 also includes a duration 400 for which the webpage corresponding to the tracking request was shown on the clientdevice. The duration 400 may be determined as a difference in timestamps340 of the next tracking request, i.e., entry B and the timestamp of thecurrest tracking request, i.e., entry A (e.g., 1488242938seconds−1488242868 seconds=70 seconds). This duration provides thetracking request label predictor 112 with additional contextualinformation when determining if the label describing tracking requeststore 235 entry A is correct or not. In an embodiment, the online system110 associated each type of tracking request with an expected durationbased on historical data, for example, typically users spend t1 time onan average on a shopping web page and t2 time on a checkout web page.For example, a user of a content publishing website 130 may be able tocomplete browsing an item for purchase on a “shopping” web page within70 seconds, indicating that the web page may be correctly labeled.Conversely, if the duration 400 indicates that the user spent only 1second shopping, for example, the label 335 indicating that the web pageis a “shopping” web page may be incorrect. Features are provided asinput into the tracking request label predictor 112, providing it withcontextual information indicating the accuracy of the label 335 providedin the tracking request store 235.

The tracking request label predictor 112 uses machine learningtechniques to train one or more models to predict labels associated withtracking requests 111 received by the online system 110. Machinelearning techniques include, for example, linear regression, decisiontrees, support vector machines, classifiers (e.g., a Naive Bayesclassifier), and gradient boosting. The tracking request label predictor112 takes, as input, feature vectors generated by the feature extractionmodule 230 and generates, as output, a score indicating a likelihoodthat labels contained in the feature vectors accurately describe typesof web pages.

The tracking request label predictor 112 is trained by the online system110 using parameters stored in the training data store 240. The trainingdata store 240 stores past tracking requests and accurate labels for thetracking requests. The tracking requests stored in the training datastore includes tracking requests representing positive and negativeexamples for each type of tracking request. A positive example for alabel includes features that correspond to the label of the web page anda negative example includes features that do not correspond to the labelof the web page.

The online system 110 uses the output scores indicating a likelihood foreach label type to identify the label most likely to be correct. Forexample, if the tracking request label predictor provides an outputscore indicating a 70% likelihood that a web page is a “checkout” webpage and a 10% likelihood that the same web page is a “payment” webpage, the online system 110 verifies whether the label provided as inputin the feature vector matches that with the highest output score. If thelabels match, the online system 110 determines that the web page islabeled correctly; if the labels are mismatched, the label with thehighest output score is selected as a replacement label for the web pageand stored in the label mapping table corresponding to that particularcontent publishing website 130.

The label mapping table 113 is a data structure maintained by the onlinesystem 110 that maps an incorrect label describing a web page typeprovided by a content publishing website 130 to a correct labelgenerated by the tracking request label predictor 112. In oneembodiment, the online system 110 supplies these correct label to thecontent publishing website 130 so that the website may update itsincorrect labels with correct labels. In another embodiment, if thecontent publishing website 130 does not update incorrect labels, theonline system 110 uses the label mapping table 113 upon receiving atracking request to map the incoming label and a URL of the webpage thatsent the tracking request to the correct label as stored in the labelmapping table 113.

The report store 114 stores information describing user actions, or“user action reports,” and reports indicating the accuracy of labelsdescribing web page types, or “label accuracy reports,” to be providedto content publishing websites 130. The online system 110 uses the labelmapping table 113 to generate, both, user action reports and labelaccuracy reports. User action reports provide the content publishingwebsite 130 with information describing how a user navigates the contentpublishing website 130. For example, if the user action report indicatesthat a user spent a threshold amount of time on a particular checkoutweb page, it may be determined that the user might have been havingdifficulty during the checkout process, perhaps due to unintuitive webpage layout. Similarly, the label accuracy reports indicate to thecontent publishing website 130 the accuracy of the labels provided intracking requests 111. If the content publishing website 130 does notupdate labels contained therein, these reports may include inaccurateinformation.

The website score generator 250 generates a score for the contentgenerator website 130. The score for the content generator website 130measures quality of the tracking requests reported by client devicesthat access the web pages of the content generator website 130. Thewebsite score generator 250 measures the quality of the contentgenerator website 130 based on various factors including the fraction ofthe web pages of the content generator website 130 that generatetracking requests, the accuracy of the labels reported by trackingrequests reported by client devices that access the web pages of thecontent generator website 130, and so on.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram of a system architecture of the website scoregenerator 250, in accordance with an embodiment. The website scoregenerator 250 comprises a website crawler 255, a website coverage scoremodule 260, a signal intent score module 265, and a conversion valuescore module 270. In other embodiments, the website score generator 250may comprise more, fewer, or other modules. Functions described hereinmay be implemented in modules different from those indicted herein.

The website coverage score module 260 determines a score for a contentgenerator website 130 indicative of a percentage of the web pages of thecontent generator website 130 that include instructions that generatetracking requests when processed by a client device 120.

The signal intent score module 265 determines a signal intent score forthe content generator website 130. The signal intent score module 265determines a signal intent score for various types of tracking requeststhat are generated by client devices that render web pages received fromthe content generator website 130. The signal intent score is a measureof a likelihood that a user will complete a particular target useraction on the content generator website 130, for example, performing atransaction or submitting a registration form. A user typically performsa sequence of preliminary user interactions before performing the targetuser interaction. For example, a user may perform certain searches,adding products to a shopping cart, checking out, and so on beforecompleting a purchase transaction.

The signal intent score module 265 stores a first mapping table thatmaps labels of tracking requests to user interaction types. The signalintent score module 265 stores a second mapping table that maps userinteraction types to signal intent score values. In some embodiments,the signal intent score module 265 stores mapping tables from labels tosignal intent score values. The mapping tables may be generated based oninformation provided by an expert user.

A high signal intent score of a particular user interaction indicatesthat there is a high likelihood of the user completing the target userinteraction if the user just performed the particular user interaction.Similarly, a low signal intent score of a particular user interactionindicates that there is a low likelihood of the user completing thetarget user interaction if the user just performed the particular userinteraction. For example, a user interaction representing a productsearch has a low signal intent score since several users perform severalproduct searches without making a purchase. In contrast, a checkoutoperation has a high signal intent score since a user performing acheckout operation is very likely to provide the remaining details tocomplete the purchase. In an embodiment, the signal intent score module265 stores numeric or alphanumeric values of signal intent score, suchas letters A-E, where A implies high signal intent score and E implieslow signal intent score, or numbers from 1-10, where 1 implies lowsignal intent score and 10 implies high signal intent score.

The signal intent score module 265 identifies the various types of userinteractions of the content generator website 130 that are reported byclient devices via tracking requests. The signal intent score module 265determines signal intent scores for various types of user interactionsreported by the client devices via tracking requests. The signal intentscore module 265 aggregates signal intent scores for the different typesof user interactions to determine a signal intent score for the contentgenerator website 130.

Example Process

FIG. 3 illustrates an example use case of receiving and storing trackingrequests, in accordance with an embodiment. In the embodimentillustrated in FIG. 3, each tracking request sent by web pages 300-310is stored in the tracking request store 235 as a separate entryassociated with the same user session (e.g., shopping experience). Asillustrated in this example use case, a user first visits URL A (e.g.,https://www.shophere.com/shop). This shopping web page 300 contains atracking pixel 315 that sends a tracking request 111 to the onlinesystem 110 as the web page is loaded into a browser 121 on the user'sclient device 120. The online system 110 receives the tracking request111 and stores it in the tracking request store 235. This trackingrequest 111 includes a URL 330 (e.g., https://www.shophere.com/shop), alabel 335 (e.g., shopping), a timestamp 340 (e.g., 1488242868), and adescription of the product 345 (e.g., Hungry Pup).

When the user has completed selecting items for purchase, the useradvances to a shopping cart web page 305 in order to review items forpurchase. Similar to the shopping web page 300, the shopping cart webpage 305 also includes a tracking pixel 320 that indicates to the onlinesystem 110 that the tracking request 111 originated on a shopping cartweb page 305. This is illustrated in the figure in the entry for URL Bin which the label 335 indicates a shopping cart web page, documents atimestamp 340, and provides a description of the product, if any (e.g.,no product to describe is NULL).

Lastly, when the user has selected all the items for purchase, placedthe items in a shopping cart, and loads a checkout web page 310, anothertracking pixel 325 sends a tracking request specifying a label 335(e.g., checkout), a timestamp 340 (e.g., 1488242964), and a descriptionof the product 345. This information is contained in its own entry(e.g., URL C) within the tracking request store 235, thus completing theuser session.

Feature Extraction Process

FIG. 4 illustrates a process by which the feature extraction module 230generates feature vectors from the entries contained in the trackingrequest store 225. Like the tracking request store 225, the featurevector store 235 contains tracking request parameters. However, thefeature vector store 235, in addition, contains contextual informationused by the tracking request label predictor 112 to further qualify thevalidity of parameters passed with a tracking request 111. For eachentry in the tracking request store 225, the feature extraction module230 generates a feature vector. In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 4,this feature vector propagates the original URL and label into thefeature vector, but identifies contextual information such as theduration 400 a user spent on respective web pages throughout a session,the volume 410 indicating the number of instances of tracking requestswith identical labels received within a session, and the sequence 420 inwhich each tracking pixel sent a tracking request. In an embodiment,various attributes describing the sequence 420 may be included in thefeature vector, for example, the number of tracking requests within thesequence, the length of time interval of the sequence, the position ofthe current tracking request within the sequence, and so on. Forexample, the feature vector may include a feature indicating whether thetracking request is in the beginning of the sequence, in the middle ofthe sequence or at the end of the sequence. Certain types of trackingrequests are more likely to occur in certain positions in a sequence oftracking requests associated with a session, for example, a trackingrequest indicating a web page for performing search for a product islikely to occur in the beginning of a sequence and a tracking requestindicating a web page for performing a checkout is more likely to occurat the end of the sequence.

The online system 110 uses the contextual information to further analyzethe accuracy associated with tracking requests 111. For example, if thesequence indicated in the tracking request store 225 instead contained acheckout event before a cart event, one of the two, or both, trackingrequests 111 might have been mislabeled. In another example, if thecontextual information extracted for the tracking request store 225indicated multiple checkout events, one or more of the events could bemislabeled as there is typically one checkout event within each session.Similarly, if the contextual information indicates that multipleregistration forms were submitted in the same session, the trackingrequest is likely to be mislabeled. In yet another example, if thecontextual information indicated that a checkout event took only afraction of one second, as indicated by its timestamp, it might beindicative of a mislabeled tracking pixel on the checkout web page.

Process for Correcting Labels of Tracking Requests

FIG. 5 illustrates a process for generating a label accuracy report fora content provider. The online system receives 500 a tracking requestfrom a client device indicating that a web page containing a trackingpixel has been displayed to a user. This tracking request is associatedwith parameters that the feature extraction module uses to extract 510feature vectors. The tracking request label predictor predicts 520 alabel for the web page corresponding to the tracking request. If thelabel provided in the tracking request differs from the predicted labelproduced by the tracking request label predictor, generate 540 a mappingtable that maps the tracking request label to the predicted label. Whenthe online system receives 550 a request for a label accuracy reportfrom a content provider, the online system generates 560 the requestedreport containing replacement labels based on the mapping tableassociated with the content provider. The online system sends 570 thegenerated label accuracy report to the content provider.

Process for Determining a Quality of Tracking by a Website

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a websitetracking score for a content publishing website 130, in accordance withan embodiment. The website score generator 250 determines a websitetracking score for a content publishing website 130 indicating a qualityof tracking instructions provided by the website to client devices. Thequality of tracking instructions provided by the content publishingwebsite 130 determines the quality of tracking requests that clientdevices provide to the online system. Accordingly, the quality oftracking determines the quality of reports describing a contentpublishing website 130 generated by the online system 110 as well as theaccuracy of the analysis performed by the online system to determinewhether to update labels received in tracking requests generates bywebpages of the website.

The online system determines various scores for the content publishingwebsite 130, each score based on a particular aspect of trackinginstructions provided by the content publishing website 130 to clientdevices. The website coverage score module 260 determines 600 a websitecoverage score for the content publishing website 130. The signal intentscore module 265 determines 610 a signal intent score for the contentpublishing website 130. The conversion value score module 270 determines620 a conversion value score for the content publishing website 130.Details of the processes for generating various scores for the contentpublishing website 130 are further described herein, for example, inFIGS. 7-9.

The website tracking score module 275 aggregates the various scoresdetermined in steps 600, 610, and 620 to determine 630 the websitetracking score. The score analysis module 280 generates 640 a reportdescribing the content publishing website 130 based on the contenttracking score. The generates report may describe individual scores suchas signal intent score, website coverage score, and so on in the reportand provide recommendation to the website based on the scores. Forexample, the score analysis module 280 may identify specific web pagesthat are missing instructions for generating tracking requestsrecommending that the content publishing website 130 should includetracking requests for these web pages. If the website tracking score isbelow a threshold value, the score analysis module 280 determines 650that the online system should replace labels received from trackingrequests with labels predicted by the online system.

FIG. 7 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a websitecoverage score for a content publishing website 130, in accordance withan embodiment. The website crawler 255 sends 700 requests for web pagesto the content publishing website 130.

The website crawler 255 accesses a content generator website 130 todetermine different types of web pages hosted by the content generatorwebsite 130. In an embodiment, the website crawler 255 receives a set ofseed web pages of the content generator website 130, for example, anindex page that includes URLs (or links) to other web pages of thecontent generator website 130. The website crawler 255 follows each URLthat points to another web page of the content generator website 130.The website crawler 255 stores each web page received. The websitecrawler 255 continues the process of selecting a stored web page,identifying URLs within the selected web page that point to other webpages of the content generator website 130, and retrieving the other webpages. The website crawler 255 repeats these steps until it fails toretrieve any new web page that was not already accessed.

In an embodiment, the website crawler 255 simulates requests sent by aclient device to the content generator website 130 to retrievedynamically generated web pages from the content generator website 130.Accordingly, the website crawler 255 may simulate various types ofsessions that a user may perform using a client device with the contentgenerator website 130. The website crawler 255 stores the retrieved webpages.

In an embodiment, the website crawler 255 compares web pages in a mannerthat ignores differences in data values of the web page. For example,the website crawler 255 considers two checkout web pages as identicaleven if the products in shopping cart are different. Similarly, thewebsite crawler 255 considers two view shopping cart web pages asidentical even if the products in the shopping cart are different.

The online system 110 receives 730 tracking requests received fromvarious client devices and determines a number of unique web pagesidentified in the tracking requests. The website coverage score module260 may identify the unique web pages by analyzing the URL for the webpage that generated the tracking request as reported by the clientdevice. The website coverage score module 260 matches the URLs reportedby the tracking requests with the URLs retrieved by the website crawler255. The website coverage score module 260 normalizes the URLs beforematching them. For example, the website coverage score module 260 mayremove certain parameter values in the URL before comparison so that twoURLs that differ only in these parameter values are consideredequivalent.

The website coverage score module 260 determines 740 an estimate of anumber of distinct web pages that have instructions to cause a clientdevice to send a tracking request. The website coverage score module 260determines 750 the website coverage score for the content generatorwebsite 130 based on a ratio of the number of unique URLs identified inthe tracking requests retrieved from various client devices and thetotal number of unique web pages of the content generator website 130.The website coverage score module 260 may determine the website coveragescore for the content generator website 130 based on a percentage of webpages of the website coverage score for the content generator website130 that generate tracking requests.

In an embodiment, the website coverage score module 260 invokes thetracking request label predictor 112 to determine a predicted label fortracking requests received from client devices. The website coveragescore module 260 compares the predicted labels with the labels receivedfrom the client devices with the tracking requests to determine whetherthe tracking requests include accurate labels. If the website coveragescore module 260 determines that the tracking requests include incorrectlabels for certain tracking requests, the website coverage score module260 marks these tracking requests. The website coverage score module 260determines a website coverage score as a weighted aggregate of thetracking requests wherein a tracking request that sends incorrect labelis weighted lower than a tracking request that sends an accurate label.

FIG. 8 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining a signalintent score for a content publishing website 130, in accordance with anembodiment. The online system 110 receives 800 tracking requests fromclient devices interacting with the content publishing website 130. Thesignal intent score module 265 determines 810 a type of user interactionfor each tracking request received from client devices. The signalintent score module 265 may determine the type of user interaction basedon the label provided by the client device for the tracking request orbased on a predicted label determined by the online system 110. In anembodiment, the signal intent score module 265 stores a mapping tablerepresenting associations between labels and types of user interactionsand uses the mapping table to determine the types of user interactionsfor each tracking request. The signal intent score module 265 determines820 a signal intent score for each tracking request reported by a clientdevice via tracking requests. The signal intent score module 265determines 830 a signal intent score for the content publishing website130 as an aggregate signal intent scores for various types of userinteractions.

In an embodiment, the signal intent score for a web site is high if thewebsite provides tracking requests for different types of signal intentsduring a session rather than only high signal intent. Accordingly, thewebsite score generator 250 monitors different types of web pages thatare generated during a session of a user with the content publishingwebsite 130. In an embodiment, the website crawler 255 interacts withthe content publishing website 130 to identify different types of webpages during a session. For example, the website crawler 255 may use atest account to interact with the content publishing website 130 andidentify web pages including product search web pages, web pages thatallow user to add products to a shopping cart, web pages that allow auser to checkout, and web pages that allow a user to make payment for atransaction. Some of these web pages are associated with a low signalintent and some are associated with a high intent signals.

The signal intent score module 265 analyzes tracking requests receivedfrom client devices to determine different types tracking requestsreceived for a complete session of the client device with the contentpublishing website 130. The signal intent score module 265 assigns ahigh score to the content publishing website 130 if different types oftracking requests for a session are received from the client device ascompared to only a few types of tracking requests. Accordingly a websitethat provides tracking requests with low signal intent as well astracking requests with high signal intent receives a higher scorecompared to a website that provides only tracking requests having highsignal intent.

In an embodiment, the signal intent score module 265 automaticallyassigns a signal intent score for a webpage. The signal intent score fora web page indicates a likelihood of a user performing a userinteraction identified as a conversion if the user performs a useraccesses the web page. The signal intent score module 265 receives fromthe website crawler 255 a sequence of web pages accessed during asession of a client device with the website. The signal intent scoremodule 265 ranks the web page in the order in which the web pages areaccessed during a user session. The signal intent score module 265assigns signal intent score to web pages based on the order in which theweb page appears in the sequence. Accordingly, the signal intent scoremodule 265 assigns low signal intent scores to web pages that areaccessed early in the sequence during a session and assigns high signalintent scores to web pages that are accessed later in the sequenceduring a session.

FIG. 9 illustrates a flowchart of the process for determining aconversion score for a content publishing website 130, in accordancewith an embodiment. A conversion refers to a user interaction that is ofparticular significance to the content publishing website 130. Forexample, the user interaction may result in the content publishingwebsite 130 receiving remuneration. Examples of user interactionsidentified as conversions include a user performing a transaction usingthe content publishing website 130 or submitting a form for registeringwith the content publishing website 130 or with another system. If theuser interaction corresponds to a transaction, the remuneration of thecontent publishing website 130 may depend on the amount of transaction.The client device may provide the value of the transaction to the onlinesystem via tracking request.

The conversion value score module 270 identifies 900 labels for webpages that perform a conversion. In an embodiment, the labels for theweb pages that perform the conversion are provided by a user.Alternatively, the conversion value score module 270 may determineidentify the web page that performs conversion by analyzing the web pageto determine whether the web page includes specific types of widgets orkeywords. In an embodiment, the conversion value score module 270 storesthe types of widgets or keyword in web pages that are likely to occur ina web page that performs conversions. For example, the conversion valuescore module 270 may store information that a web page that allows auser to submit a registration includes one or more fields for enteringvalues and a submit button. Furthermore, the conversion value scoremodule 270 may store information that the fields for entering values arelikely to include labels such as “first name”, “last name”, and so on.

The website score generator 250 receives 910 tracking requests with theidentified labels. The conversion value score module 270 verifieswhether the received labels with the tracking requests by comparing thereceived labels with predicted labels. The conversion value score module270 identifies tracking requests associated with conversions based onthe verification. In some embodiments, the conversion value score module270 uses a predicted label for a tracking request to determine whetherthe tracking request corresponds to a conversion.

The conversion value score module 270 determines 930 whether thetracking request that corresponds to a conversion provides a conversionvalue as a parameter. In an embodiment, the conversion value scoremodule 270 stores a list of parameter names that are likely to representa conversion value. The conversion value score module 270 comparesparameters received with the tracking requests with the stored parameternames. If the name of a received parameter matches the stored parameternames, the conversion value score module 270 may further check type ofthe value to verify if it matches an expected type of conversion value.For example, the conversion value score module 270 may determine whetherthe parameter value represents a numeric representation of dollars andcents.

A web page may have a plurality of web pages that perform conversions.Accordingly, the conversion value score module 270 identifies a numberof web pages of the website that include instructions that cause aclient device 120 to provide a conversion value in a tracking request.The conversion value score module 270 determines 940 a websiteconversion value score for the content publishing website 130 based on anumber of the web pages of the content publishing website 130 thatperform conversion that include instructions to provide conversionvalues with the tracking requests generated by client devices.

Alternative Embodiments

The foregoing description of the embodiments has been presented for thepurpose of illustration; it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limitthe embodiments to the precise forms disclosed. Persons skilled in therelevant art can appreciate that many modifications and variations arepossible in light of the above disclosure.

Some portions of this description describe the embodiments in terms ofalgorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information.These algorithmic descriptions and representations are commonly used bythose skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance oftheir work effectively to others skilled in the art. These operations,while described functionally, computationally, or logically, areunderstood to be implemented by computer programs or equivalentelectrical circuits, microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has alsoproven convenient at times, to refer to these arrangements of operationsas modules, without loss of generality. The described operations andtheir associated modules may be embodied in software, firmware,hardware, or any combinations thereof.

Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may beperformed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules,alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, asoftware module is implemented with a computer program productcomprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code,which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or allof the steps, operations, or processes described.

Embodiments may also relate to an apparatus for performing theoperations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for therequired purposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computingdevice selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer programstored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in anon-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium, or any typeof media suitable for storing electronic instructions, which may becoupled to a computer system bus. Furthermore, any computing systemsreferred to in the specification may include a single processor or maybe architectures employing multiple processor designs for increasedcomputing capability.

Embodiments may also relate to a product that is produced by a computingprocess described herein. Such a product may comprise informationresulting from a computing process, where the information is stored on anon-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium and mayinclude any embodiment of a computer program product or other datacombination described herein.

Finally, the language used in the specification has been principallyselected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not havebeen selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter.It is therefore intended that the scope of the embodiments be limitednot by this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue onan application based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of theembodiments is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of thescope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method comprising:receiving, by an online system, a plurality of tracking requests fromone or more client devices, each tracking request received responsive toa client device of the one or more client devices presenting a web pagereceived from a website, the web page comprising tracking instructionsfor generating tracking requests responsive to rendering the web page onthe client device, the tracking request configured to send informationdescribing the web page to the online system; for each of the pluralityof tracking requests associated with the website: determining a type ofuser interaction represented by the tracking request, the type of userinteraction determined based on information received in the trackingrequest; determining a signal intent score for the tracking requestbased on the type of user interaction, the signal intent scoreindicating a likelihood of a user performing a particular userinteraction with the website; generating a website tracking score forthe website based on the signal intent scores for the tracking requestsassociated with the website, the website tracking score indicative of aquality of tracking requests generated by the website; responsive to thewebsite tracking score for the website indicating a low quality oftracking requests generated by the website, generating a reportdescribing interactions of client devices with the website, the reportusing labels predicted by the online system, each label corresponding toa webpage sent by the website to a client device; and sending thegenerated report for presentation to users associated with the website.2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the trackinginstructions are executed responsive to displaying a tracking pixel ofthe webpage rendered by on the client device.
 3. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the signal intent scorefor the tracking request associated with the web page is determinedbased on an order in which the web page occurs within a session betweenthe client device and the website, the web page associated with thetracking request.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, furthercomprising: sending, by the online system, a plurality of requests forweb pages of the website, the plurality of requests representing asession between the online system and the website; receiving, by theonline system, a plurality of web pages from the website, each web pagereceived responsive to a request for a web page; and ranking the webpages in the order in which the web pages are received during thesession.
 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein a signalintent score for a tracking request associated with a web page thatoccurs later in the session is determined to be higher than a signalintent score for a tracking request associated with a web page thatoccurs earlier in the session.
 6. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, further comprising: determining, by the online system, a signalintent score for the website, wherein the determined signal intent scoreis an aggregate of one or more signal intent scores associated withvarious types of user interactions.
 7. A non-transitory computerreadable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, whenexecuted by a processor, cause the processor to perform the stepsincluding: receiving, by an online system, a plurality of trackingrequests from one or more client devices, each tracking request receivedresponsive to a client device of the one or more client devicespresenting a web page received from a website, the web page comprisingtracking instructions for generating tracking requests responsive torendering the web page on the client device, the tracking requestconfigured to send information describing the web page to the onlinesystem; for each of the plurality of tracking requests associated withthe website: determining a type of user interaction represented by thetracking request, the type of user interaction determined based oninformation received in the tracking request; determining a signalintent score for the tracking request based on the type of userinteraction, the signal intent score indicating a likelihood of a userperforming a particular user interaction with the website; generating awebsite tracking score for the website based on the signal intent scoresfor the tracking requests associated with the website, the websitetracking score indicative of a quality of tracking requests generated bythe website; responsive to the website tracking score for the websiteindicating a low quality of tracking requests generated by the website,generating a report describing interactions of client devices with thewebsite, the report using labels predicted by the online system, eachlabel corresponding to a webpage sent by the website to a client device;and sending the generated report for presentation to users associatedwith the website.
 8. The non-transitory computer readable storage mediumof claim 7, wherein the tracking instructions are executed responsive todisplaying a tracking pixel of the webpage rendered by on the clientdevice.
 9. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim7, wherein the signal intent score for the tracking request associatedwith the web page is determined based on an order in which the web pageoccurs within a session between the client device and the website, theweb page associated with the tracking request.
 10. The non-transitorycomputer readable storage medium of claim 9, further comprising:sending, by the online system, a plurality of requests for web pages ofthe website, the plurality of requests representing a session betweenthe online system and the website; receiving, by the online system, aplurality of web pages from the website, each web page receivedresponsive to a request for a web page; and ranking the web pages in theorder in which the web pages are received during the session.
 11. Thenon-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein asignal intent score for a tracking request associated with a web pagethat occurs later in the session is determined to be higher than asignal intent score for a tracking request associated with a web pagethat occurs earlier in the session.
 12. The non-transitory computerreadable storage medium of claim 7, further comprising: determining, bythe online system, a signal intent score for the website, wherein thedetermined signal intent score is an aggregate of one or more signalintent scores associated with various types of user interactions.
 13. Acomputer system comprising: one or more electronic processors; and anon-transitory computer readable storage medium, storing instructionsfor the steps comprising: receiving, by an online system, a plurality oftracking requests from one or more client devices, each tracking requestreceived responsive to a client device of the one or more client devicespresenting a web page received from a website, the web page comprisingtracking instructions for generating tracking requests responsive torendering the web page on the client device, the tracking requestconfigured to send information describing the web page to the onlinesystem; for each of the plurality of tracking requests associated withthe website: determining a type of user interaction represented by thetracking request, the type of user interaction determined based oninformation received in the tracking request; determining a signalintent score for the tracking request based on the type of userinteraction, the signal intent score indicating a likelihood of a userperforming a particular user interaction with the website; generating awebsite tracking score for the website based on the signal intent scoresfor the tracking requests associated with the website, the websitetracking score indicative of a quality of tracking requests generated bythe website; responsive to the website tracking score for the websiteindicating a low quality of tracking requests generated by the website,generating a report describing interactions of client devices with thewebsite, the report using labels predicted by the online system, eachlabel corresponding to a webpage sent by the website to a client device;and sending the generated report for presentation to users associatedwith the website.
 14. The computer system of claim 13, wherein thetracking instructions are executed responsive to displaying a trackingpixel of the webpage rendered by on the client device.
 15. The computersystem of claim 13, wherein the signal intent score for the trackingrequest associated with the web page is determined based on an order inwhich the web page occurs within a session between the client device andthe website, the web page associated with the tracking request.
 16. Thecomputer system of claim 15, further comprising: sending, by the onlinesystem, a plurality of requests for web pages of the website, theplurality of requests representing a session between the online systemand the website; receiving, by the online system, a plurality of webpages from the website, each web page received responsive to a requestfor a web page; and ranking the web pages in the order in which the webpages are received during the session.
 17. The computer system of claim15, wherein a signal intent score for a tracking request associated witha web page that occurs later in the session is determined to be higherthan a signal intent score for a tracking request associated with a webpage that occurs earlier in the session.